Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Speaking of bad timing, yesterday the Washington Post
published an op-ed about the waning influence of Islamist terrorism. Written by
terrorism experts J.M. Berger and Amarnath Amarasingam the
article suggests that by losing its caliphate and being soundly defeated in
Iraq and Syria ISIS has suffered a significant loss.

It will not be very much of a consolation to New Yorkers, but at a time when every talking head on television is proclaiming how powerful
ISIS is in its scattered, disorganized state, how much damage it can do
without mounting large scale terrorist attacks, it is perhaps worthwhile to
take a step back, to take a deep breath and to evaluate the current state of
the war against Islamist terrorism. It seems that we have now started winning.

This does not mean that the war is over or that Islamist terrorism has been defeated. But still, it is better to evaluate the global situation than to cower in the corner thinking that we are weak and vulnerable.

The authors explain:

As the
Islamic State evolves, we should not only remind people about its ongoing
threat. We should also acknowledge and highlight the fact it has suffered
enormous losses that will cripple the effectiveness of its previous approach to
recruitment. As its slogan famously states, the Islamic State will likely
“remain,” but it has lost far more than territory. It has lost the living,
beating heart of its appeal.

Everybody wants to join a winning team. Once the team starts
losing fewer and fewer people will want to join. It doesn’t mean no one. It
doesn’t mean that jihadis are all going to fold up their tents and shrink back
into the general population. It does mean that the West has been winning
battles in Syria and Iraq. It also means that the Sunni Arab commitment—now led
by a reform-minded Saudi Arabia-- to fight terror represents a good step in
the right direction.

Obviously, this does not make vigilance any less important.
It certainly tells us that “diversity” immigration programs should be stopped. And
it means that the flow of refugees from Muslim countries should be seriously reduced.

But, it is better to think that we are winning than that we
are losing. It is better to think that we are advancing against Islamist
terrorism than that we are being defeated by it.

The authors explain their perspective:

In June
2014, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria branded itself as a caliphate. Over
the past year, its catastrophic loss of population centers and governing
infrastructure have prompted an avalanche
of analysis on the next phase, projecting the group’s likely reversion
to insurgency and terrorism.

But the
organizational lens only captures part of the picture. The Islamic State’s
success as a protostate and its future as an insurgent/terrorist group was and
is fueled by a social movement that ensured a steady flow of adherents to
execute its ambitions. Understanding the movement’s appeal is crucial to
forecasting its future.

What did it mean for the Islamic State to declare a
caliphate?

By
declaring a caliphate, the group did something that other jihadist groups only
talked about, accessing a wellspring of historical, philosophical and
theological details. It presented a more sophisticated rejection of the West
than other jihadist groups, focused not only on “sinful” cultural elements, but
also real, substantial alternatives. And thousands of people from all over the
world responded.

At the least, it looked like it was winning the war against
Western civilization. It could provide a place, a defined space where radical
Islamists could live according to their version of Shariah law. The appeal was
palpable:

Friends
and family members of foreign fighters interviewed by researchers at the
University of Waterloo were repeatedly told that young people traveled to Syria
precisely to live in a more homogenous “Muslim” environment. One young woman
from Canada moved to Syria because she felt “dirty and deadly” in her old
lifestyle. Dirty because she thought the way of life in Canada was un-Islamic
and deadly because she was paying taxes to a government that was bombing “her
people.” In Syria, she felt this cognitive dissonance dissipate.

The
Islamic State made a repeated and sustained argument that it was about governance,
not simply terrorism. Scenes from the living caliphate provided a sense of
authenticity and immanence to which few extremist groups could ever aspire, all
extensively documented and broadcast to the world over the Internet. Islamic
State propaganda provided a
flood of Technicolor vignettes featuring its implementation of rules
and standards on every aspect of life.

Terrorism is about destruction. It is about deconstruction used as a rhetorical tool. If it has a caliphate ISIS can also claim to have built something, to
offer something other than mindless suicide bombings.

ISIS has been losing ground. It is no longer living in its
heyday under the aegis of the Obama administration. Thus, its propaganda has
shifted focus, from idyllic scenes to warfighting:

In
August 2015, more than half of all video and photo content put out by the
Islamic State was utopian in nature. Typical offerings included images and
videos of markets, schools, hospitals, nursing homes and courts — all of the
trappings of a highly entitative group, a “real” society, now destroyed by the
anti-Islamic State coalition. By September 2017, according to researcher Charlie
Winter, only about 10 percent of the organization’s content pertained to
its utopian vision, with a sharp drop in total output and a vast increase in
the proportion of warfighting content.

Of course, the group is trying to regain what it has lost.
And yet, it now has little to offer those who wish to escape from Western
civilization... except perhaps 72 virgins.

The authors conclude that we should not believe that
setbacks do not matter. And we should not believe that losing the caliphate will
only make ISIS terrorists more brutal and more determined. True enough, people who have nothing to lose can, at times, be extremely violent. And yet, there might now be fewer and fewer of such lost souls.

In the West weak-kneed appeasers believe that we in the
West are responsible for the rise of ISIS and al Qaeda because we treat Muslims
so badly. By their reasoning, all we need to do is to be nice to Islam, close
Gitmo, send Taliban commanders back to the battlefield, and presto, the threat
will dissipate. It was the Obama policy. It gave us ISIS and the caliphate.

In truth, ISIS became far more potent when it declared a
caliphate. It then could offer hope and a home as concrete signs of victory. Isn't war about occupying territory?

The caliphate, along with successful terrorist attacks, was the best recruiting
tool ever. Muslims from Western Europe especially flocked there. They pledged allegiance to its leaders. They were even rewarded for their efforts. Some have now
returned to Europe, to the chagrin of the Europeans who mistakenly offered them refuge. Draining that swamp is going to take time and energy... but at least we should understand that we are engaged in a winning fight.

6 comments:

Focusing on the simple fact that Bur'aq Obama's oft-bemoaned Misunderstanderers of Islam will melt back into the stinking souks and mountain ratholes they emerged from to continue their murderous Jihad, as many on the Diverse Left do, is a perfect example of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

No, the fall of Raqqa does not "solve" the Misunderstanderer of Islam problem, but it does deny them a football stadium to entertain the masses of Misunderstanderer spectators who revel in the spectacle of immolations, dismemberments, hangings, beheadings, and other various and sundry forms of Sharia "justice".

I consider that to be an unalloyed Good Thing.

What is missing here is a brilliant, iconoclastic, Marxist theoretician to devise a counterintuitive, redistributionist solution that, administered properly and with limitless budget, will turn swords into ploughshares. Obviously, building more schools was just not enough. :-D

Stuart: In the West weak-kneed appeasers believe that we in the West are responsible for the rise of ISIS and al Qaeda because we treat Muslims so badly. By their reasoning, all we need to do is to be nice to Islam, close Gitmo, send Taliban commanders back to the battlefield, and presto, the threat will dissipate. It was the Obama policy. It gave us ISIS and the caliphate.

I'm not sure Obama was particularly nice to Muslims, assuming we have to show how brutal we can be to innocent people to prove we're against brutal people. Obama expanded drone attacks greatly during his presidency.

I do agree that it looks like "hearts and minds" is where the real war is being fought, and we can't bomb bad ideas out of people's minds, or not unless we want to preemptively murder every person who might become infected in bad ideas. And so we have to accept there's going to be more small scale terrorist attacks before ISIS is done.

It would be nice if every terrorist attack in the U.S. was proof of the evil of ISIS, and every imperfectly directed drone attack in the middle east by the U.S. was proof of our determination for peaceful coexistence, but that twisted logic seems to be easily reversed.

TW is right, building schools was not enough. But I'm not sure doubling down on friendship with Saudis (and their Wahabism schools funded on oil profits by our addiction to cheap oil) against Shiite Iran solves any problems besides how to expand our arms exports and increase the means to violence in the region.

Interestingly this isn't just a "war" between Islam and the West. ISIS isn't the only propaganda source. Now we know social media can enable Russians to create fake political protest moments from both sides to encourage actual conflict on the streets in America. Pretty impressive. Of course they're not the cause, they merely light the match of our fears.https://www.wired.com/story/six-revealing-moments-from-the-second-day-of-russia-hearings

So the reason FDR said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" isn't because they world isn't dangerous. It's because our fear can make us idiots, ripe and vulnerable for manipulation by people we don't know and whom mean us no good.

Among people from any background, some will be more vulnerable to propaganda than others, like Trump happily retweeting neonazi propaganda that most whites are killed by blacks, and when challenged, he naively asked "Am I supposed to check every tweet?" Yes! said Fox leftist Bill O'Reilly.